Comments by "Big Woody" (@bigwoody4704) on "TIKhistory"
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your lack of research don't cut it!
ARNHEM,The Complete Story of Operation Market Garden,by William Buckingham,p.145 the Irish Guards were an hour and 11 miles behind when it's tanks rolled into Valkenswaard main square on the night of the 17th, and Horrocks no movement after dark extended this shorfall to 12 hours at a stroke. It remained to be seen if Guards Armored Division would prove capable of moving the following day with sufficient dispatch to make up at least some of the lost time
Arnhem: The Complete Story of Operation Market Garden 17-25 September 1944,p.309 At the North end of the Bridge,Major Cook's paratroopers had fully expected the Guards Armored Division to push on immediately to Arnhem just 10 miles up the road. Their elation turned to anger as the growing British Force remained immobile
Having paid in blood to secure the Bridges their ire was understandable and it was shared by their regimental commander Colonel Tucker who was overheard in an exchange with an unknown British major in a command post near the Bridge ramp.General Gavins recollection of visiting Tucker in the early morning of the 21st "Tucker was livid.I had never seen him so angry,his 1st question to me was "what the hell are they doing? We have been in this position for over 12 hours and all they seem to be doing is brewing tea." Gavin did not have an answer for him.
The puzzlement was shared by British Officer LT Brian Wilson's platoon from the 3rd Irish Guards had been among the 1st to cross the road bridge in the wake of SgT Robinson's troops and after an night of sitting Wilson stopped at Company HQ "as far as I could discover Nijmegen was cleared....the situation at Arnhem remained desperate. Yet Guards Armored did not move" German Colonel Heinz Harmel's view the British failure to advance rapidly North from Nijmegen Bridge squandered the last chance to reach 1st Para still clinging to the north end of the Arnhem Bridge. Because at that time there was virtually no German troops between the two points And that remained the case for up to 16 hrs until the Germans were able to fully access the Arnhem Bridge midday on Sept 21st and bring reinforcements south. By halting XXX Corp effectively handed the intiative back to II SS Panzerkorps which used the time to erect an effective defense where none had existed as the Irish Guards discovered when it finally attempted to resume the advance at 13:30 on 21 September.Why the Guards Armored failed to push on remains controversial
Arnhem: The Complete Story of Operation Market Garden 17-25 September 1944,by Willam Buckingham,p.358 LT Brian Wilson of the 3rd Irish Guards recalled patrols of US Paratroopers constantly roaming through his location while "for our part" we just sat in our positions all night.
As Heinz Harmel later put it the English stopped for tea the 4 tanks who crossed the Bridge made a mistake staying in Lent, if they carried on their advance it would have been all over for us A rapid and concentrated relief effort across the lower Rhine never happened because the Irish Guards remained immobile for hours in darkness and beyond as the Guards Armored Division had collectively done since Operation Garden commenced
Arnhem,by Willam Buckingham,p.359 as LT Brian Wilson put it the situation at Arnhem remained desperate yet the Guards Armored Division did not move While the Germans used the windfall respite to organize their blocking line.
Arnhem,by Willam Buckingham,p.360 The Irish Guards did not try to hard despite the urgency of the situation .Lt-Col John Vandeluer ordered to hold in place after the advance was stopped in the early afternoon .The clear inference was that the Guards had done enough and it was time for another formation to take over. Lt Brian Wilson considered this attitude "shameful" that his Division had remained immobile for 18 hrs after the Nijmegen Bridges had been secured. LT John Gorman a commander in the 2nd Irish Guards was equally forthright "we had come all the way from Normandy,taken Brussels fought half way through Holland and crossed the Nijmegen Bridge.Arnhem and those Paratroopers were just up ahead and almost insight of the bloody bridge we were stopped. I never felt so much despair"
Sabastian Ritchie's Arnhem Myth and Reality,p.219 "Montgomery went over my head" Air Marshall Conningham recalled after the war. "Month after month he did that; until he had his failure at Arnhem - then they made him listen. He violated all command channels"
"Monty's water logged summaries tried to hide glaring weaknesses of a hopelessly flawed plan" - Sabastian Ritchie.
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Just seeing this absolutely a great unkown man. I just told another poster this:
I'm convinced his trajectory would have kept rising.A brilliant man who escaped TWICE finally making it back to allied lines for good somewhere in Italy. He would have never been in that position had Winston rewarded his smashing victory by removing 50,000 of his troops.He had no business in the War room I'm convinced that doomed O'Connor's rising star.I can't imagine Brooke,IKE,Monty,Patton,Bradley,Horrocks,Dempsey,Truscutt doing it. Younger guys like maybe Collins/Gavin/Roberts/Lumsden perhaps
Winston really screwed the pooch there. The guy takes 133,000 Axis troops,400 tanks,1294 Artillery guns in just under 2 months with 36,000 man Army w/o either air superiority or ULTRA and the brandy adled Winston rewards him by taking 50,000 of his troops and sending them to Greece and Crete,FFS.Which IMHO led to his capture
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The Village Anus wrote
Unlike the prick Big Woody who quotes just about anyone who writes sonething likes and that he can find on Wikipedia.
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Just keeps getting better and better.I should be charging for this. Monty failed once and that was continuously so i see how you like him. Ya Alan Brooke and the Germans who were there didn't know but you in your hive of hallucination does?You know who wasn't there? Bernard Law Montgomery.Not sure if it's dementia,delusion or denial Little Villa cobbles together falsehoods & fantasy while scuttling facts not previously encountered making discussion itself intolerable.
It took 6months after failing at Monty Garden for Bernard to cross the RHine and that was with Simpsons 9th US ARMY The Hurtgen mistakes does not turn Market Garden's failure into a success. Also, the Lorraine campaign lasted from 1 Sep to Dec, not just 9 days, 6,657 were killed over 3 months and they took 75,000 German PoWs, compared with 17,000 casualties at Market Garden (which was more than the invasion of Normandy) including nearly 2,000 Brits and Poles killed before taking the American killed into account. Market Garden had nearly 3 times the casualties per day. Op Queen and the Hurtgen Forest battles (of which Queen was part) were costly failures, also, but the same argument applies - the period was far longer and the average losses less together with much higher Axis casualties and PoWs and they do not turn Market Garden into a success. Market Garden was a failure. Get use to and over it.
Max Hastings,Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45 Freddie de Guingand Monty's Chief of Staff telephoned him saying the operation would be launched too late to exploit German disarray.That XXX Corps push to Arnhem would being made on a narrow front along one road,Monty ignored him
The Second World War by John Keegan,page 437 The Plan was the most calamitous flaw in the post Normandy campaign .It was more over barely excusable,since Ultra was supplying Montgomery's HQs from Sept 5 onward with intelligence .As early as Sept 12 Monty's own intelligence reported the Germans intended to hold out along the approaches to Antwerp. Monty - despite every warning and contrary to common military sense - refused to turn his troops back in their tracks to clear the Scheldt Estuary.
Max Hastings,Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45 The release of the files from German Signals by Bletchley Park conclusively showed that the 9th & 10th Panzer Divisions were re-fitting in the Arnhem area.With their Recon Battalions intact.Yet when Bedell-Smith(SHAEF) brought this to Monty's attention "he ridiculed the idea and waved my objections airly aside"
This from the BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/battle_arnhem_01.shtml At the end of the first day, XXX corps had advanced only seven miles from their start line and had not reached the first in the sequence of bridges. Meanwhile the Germans were reinforcing, and their tanks were moving into Arnhem ready to take on the lightly armed British paratroopers.
From Retreat to the Reich by Samuel W.Mitcham Jr.,page 244 The US 82nd Airborne was also tied up in heavy fighting in Nijmegen against elements of the 9th SS Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion which was reinforced by I Battalion/22nd SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment(part of the 10th SS Division). Still the Allies might have won the Battle had the armored advance not been slow .By September 19th they were still miles south of Nijmegen trying to push an entire Corp down a single road.
From September Hope,by John C.McManus,pages 63 General Browning cautioned General Gavin "Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges,it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it
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Enjoy!Hastings and Beevor are both Pritzker Military Literature Award Winners, and both members Royal Society of Literature & Royal Historical Society. And you mop puddles at the Adult Theater - so you have that going for you.I also quote Dr Niall Barr who has a PHD and lectures at King's College on Military History.
HQ blaming Montgomery
Alan Brooke's own words
"Triumph in the West, by Arthur Bryant, From the diary of Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke, entry for 5 October 1944:Page 219" During the whole discussion one fact stood out clearly, that access to Antwerp must be captured with the least possible delay. I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault, Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place. Ramsay brought this out well in the discussion and criticized Monty freely....."
Or Bernard himself after the War admitting it
The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson, page 303 Even Field Marshall Brooke had doubts about Montgomery's priorities "Antwerp must be captured with the Least possible delay" he wrote in his diary Admiral Ramsey wrote and warned that clearing the Scheldt of mines would take weeks, even after the German defenders were flicked away from the banks of the waterway" Monty made the startling announcement that he would take the Ruhr with out Antwerp this afforded me the cue I needed to lambaste him.......I let fly with all my guns at the faulty strategy we had allowed Montgomery. He would acknowledge as much after the war, conceding "a bad mistake on my part"
From a PHD at King's College who also notes Ramsay/Brooke warned Monty about the Scheldt Estuary
Eisenhower's Armies ,by Dr Niall Barr ,page 415 After the failure of Market-Garden, Eisenhower held a conference on 5 October 1944 that not only provided a post mortem on the operation but in which he reiterated his strategy for the campaign. Alan Brooke was present as an observer, noted that IKE's strategy continued to focus on the clearance of the Scheldt Estuary, followed by an advance on the Rhine, the capture of the Ruhr and a subsequent advance on Berlin. After a full and frank discussion in which Admiral Ramsey criticized Montgomery freely, Brooke was moved to write, I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault,instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the 1st place....IKE nobly took all the blame on himself as he had approved Monty's suggestion to operate on Arnhem
How about Air Marshall Tedder
With Prejudice, by Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander AEF, Page 599" Eisenhower assumed, as he and I had done all along, that whatever happened Montgomery would concentrate on opening up Antwerp. No one could say that we had not emphasized the point sufficiently by conversation and signal
How about Monty's Chief of Staff
Max Hastings, Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45 Freddie de Guingand Monty's Chief of Staff telephoned him saying the operation would be launched too late to exploit German disarray. That XXX Corps push to Arnhem would being made on a narrow front along one road,Monty ignored him
How about IKE's/Allied HQ Chief of Staff Bedell-Smith
Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany,1944-45 The release of the files from German Signals by Bletchley Park conclusively showed that the 9th & 10th Panzer Divisions were re-fitting in the Arnhem area. With their Recon Battalions intact. Yet when Bedel-Smith(SHAEF) brought this to Monty's attention "he ridiculed the idea and waved my objections airly aside"
How about IKE's Private Papers?
The Eisenhower Papers, volume IV, by Edward Chandler By early September Montgomery and other Allied leaders thought the Wehrmacht was finished . *It was this understanding that led Monty to insist on the Market-Garden Operation over the more mundane task of opening the port of Antwerp. He ignored Eisenhower's letter of Sept 4 assigning Antwerp as the primary mission for the Northern Group of Armies
And of course Admiral Ramsay who knew a deep water port was needed
Ardennes 1944,By Sir Antony Beevor, page 14 Sir Bertram Ramsey ,Allied Naval commander-in-chief had told SHAEF and Monty that the Germans could block the Scheldt Estuary with ease. The mistake lay with Monty, who was not interested in the estuary and thought the Canadians could clear it later
Try looking up Churchill's biographer Martin Gilbert who took over 20 yrs to finish the 8 volumes on Winston's life
Road to Victory, Winston Churchill 1941-45,by Martin Gilbert A British War cabinet memo suggested that the appointment of Monty was from the point of view of it's reception by public opinion. Apparently that clinched the War Cabinet's vote for Montgomery; based strictly on military accomplishments, the case for him was very weak
The Second World War by John Keegan p. 437 The Plan was the most calamitous flaw in the post Normandy campaign .It was more over barely excusable, since Ultra was supplying Montgomery's HQs from Sept 5 onward with intelligence .As early as Sept 12 Monty's own intelligence reported the Germans intended to hold out along the approaches to Antwerp. Monty - despite every warning and contrary to common military sense - refused to turn his troops back in their tracks to clear the Scheldt Estuary
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Ardennes 1944:The Battle of the Bulge, p366 While undoubtedly an American Triumph,the Ardennes campaign produced a political defeat for the British. And as Churchill recognized there was a much greater consequence. Montgomery would find himself sidelined once across the Rhine on the advance into Germany and all British advice was ignored. The Country's influence was at an end The German and Allied casualties in the Ardennes fighting from 16 December 1944 to 29 January 1945 were fairly equaled.
- German losses were around 80,000 dead,wounded,missing.
- The Americans suffered 75,482 casualties,with 8,407 KIA.
- The British lost 1,408 wounded of whom 200 were killed
Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge - Page 304 Field Marshall Sir Alan Brooke was disturbed when he heard Monty's account "it looks to me as if Monty with his usual lack of tact has been rubbing into Ike too much Monty advice".Too much "I told you so"*
Ardennes 1944:The Battle of the Bulge,page356 On January 18,determined to mend fences, Churchill made a speech in the House of Commons to emphasize "The United States troops have done almost all of the Fighting and have suffered almost all of the losses....Care must be taken in telling our proud tale not to claim for the British Army an undue share of what is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the War and will I believe, be regarded as an ever famous American Victory" It was Montgomery's own fault that political considerations and rivalries now dictated allied strategy
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Ah Lyndon playing in the latrine again - At least 6 people quoted here think you are full of it
"He had made an awful mistake. I didn't like him at all." Leo Major, the most decorated Canadian soldier of WWII
From the Ottawa Citizen,May 7th ,2005 Mr. Major is even less charitable to Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, who headed up British and Canadian forces.
Field Marshall Montgomery's ill-fated thrust deep into occupied Holland in the fall of 1944, a paratroop attack on river crossings, was an utter failure and undertaken at the expense of a broad steady advance. That delayed the the liberation of the country's biggest cities, Mr. Major figures, and condemned their populace to slow starvation through the infamous "Hunger Winter" that took the lives of 20,000 Dutch civilians
Pte. Major had an opportunity to express his displeasure with Field Marshall Monty soon afterward. It was during the battle for Scheldt, an estuary guarding the Belgian port of Antwerp. The exploit was supposed to win him a field decoration directly from the hands of Field Marshall Montgomery, but Pte. Major couldn't bring himself to accept. "He had made an awful mistake. I didn't like him at all."
Arnhem,Jumping the Rhine in 1944 and 1945. By Lloyd Clark, page 333 Tom Hoare, who fought with the 3rd Para at Arnhem may be said to reflect a commonly held perception of OMG, (or Field Marshall Montgomery’s fiasco,as he calls it) when he writes:'It is my opinion that Monty was a great soldier, but he had a even greater ego. When victory was in sight for the Allies, he degenerated into nothing more than a glory seeker. With little regard for the welfare or indeed the lives of his men of the British 1st Airborne Division, he threw the division away in an insane attempt to go down in history as the greatest military leader of the Second World War.’
Armageddon - The Battle for Germany,1944-45 by Max Hastings,page 50 Jack Reynolds and his unit,the South Staffords,were locked into the long,messy,bloody battle.There was no continuous front,no coherent plan,merely a series of uncoordinated collisions between rival forces in woods,fields,gardens and streets. That is when it got home to me.What a very bad operation this was The scale dropped from my eyes when I realized just how far from our objective we've landed
As Bob Peatling of the 2 Para said "Marshall Montgomery dropped a clanger at Arnhem"
Maj. Freddie Hennessy the operations officer of the Guards Armored Division which was in the vanguard of the push up the road, compared advancing sixty-four miles on a narrow highway over several major water crossings to “threading seven needles with one piece of cotton, and we only have to miss one to be in trouble.”
Road to Victory,Winston Churchill 1941-45,by Martin Gilbert A British War cabinet memo suggested that the appointment of Monty was from the point of view of it's reception by public opinion. Apparently that clinched the War Cabinet's vote for Montgomery;based strictly on military accomplishments,the case for Monty was very weak.
Eisenhower's Armies,by Dr Niall Barr,page 254 In terms of the Anglo-American divide the Sicilian episode demonstrated that antagonism was not confined to American officers.Montgomery's behavior made enemies of Admiral Cunningham and Air Marshall Tedder as well as their staffs. The much vaunted rivalry between Patton and Montgomery was minor compared to the depths hostility that had developed with the Royal Air Force.Tedder told Patton that Monty was "a little fellow of average ability who has had such a build up that he thinks of himself as Napoleon - he is not"
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Martin van Creveld calculated in his superb study of logistics, Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein to Patton Monty’s “40 divisions” realistically would have been quickly reduced to a mere 18 when all logistical and operational requirements were considered. Captured ground could not simply be left in a vacuum, but had to be occupied and defended against the inevitable German counterattacks. Supply lines had to be protected and secured, and as a force advanced, those key “sinews of war” extended longer and longer, requiring the diversion of increasing numbers of combat troops to protect them. Moreover, because Monty failed to capture the Scheldt Estuary expeditiously and open the port of Antwerp (closed to Allied shipping until December), Ike’s SHAEF logisticians at the time calculated that only 12 divisions could have been supported in a rapid advance. Van Creveld weighed all the factors in the “broad front” vs. “narrow thrust” strategy debate and concluded, “In the final account, the question as to whether Montgomery’s plan presented a real alternative to Eisenhower’s strategy must be answered in the negative"
Eisenhower actually gave Montgomery a chance to show that his narrow thrust strategy could succeed – and Monty botched it Ike approved the September 1944 Operation Market-Garden, Monty’s attempt to “jump” the lower Rhine and position his army group to drive on to the Ruhr industrial region. Market-Garden famously and disastrously failed at the “bridge too far” at Arnhem at the same time that German forces supposedly were so depleted and disorganized that Monty’s narrow thrust, it was claimed, would easily slice right through them and capture the Ruhr. Monty’s boast that his single axis advance would quickly win the war was both literally and figuratively “a bridge too far” at that point of the war in Europe
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Monty was an idiot,even the Russians used the Broad front thrust.
British author of Military History, Max Hastings, The SECRET WAR, Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas 1939 -1945 referring to Field Marshal Montgomery on page 495 “The little British field-marshal’s neglect of crystal-clear intelligence, and of an important strategic opportunity, became a major cause of the Western Allied failure to break into the heart of Germany in 1944.The same overconfidence was responsible for the launch of the doomed airborne assault in Holland on 17 September, despite Ultra’s flagging of the presence near the drop zone of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, together with Field-Marshal Walter Model’s headquarters at Oosterbeek. Had ‘victory fever’ not blinded Allied commanders, common sense dictated that even drastically depleted SS panzers posed a mortal threat to lightly armed and mostly inexperienced British airborne units. Ultra on 14-15 September also showed the Germans alert to the danger of an airborne landing in Holland It was obvious that it would be a very hard to drive the British relief force eighty miles up a single Dutch road, with the surrounding countryside impassable for armor, unless the Germans failed to offer resistance. The decision to launch Operation Market Garden’ against this background was recklessly irresponsible, and the defeat remains a deserved blot on Montgomery’s reputation
The Eisenhower Papers,volume IV,by Edward Chandler By early September Montgomery and other Allied leaders thought the Wehrmacht was finished .It was this understanding that led Monty to insist on the Market-Garden Operation over the more mundane task of opening the port of Antwerp. He ignored Eisenhower's letter of Sept 4 assigning Antwerp as the primary mission for the Northern Group of Armies
The Dutch Army Staff College final exam before the war asked students about how to advance north on just this road. Any student suggesting a direct assault up the road was failed on the spot. Only flanking well to the west was accepted as an answer
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